Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

And all of whom were flesh and blood — friends — had families… .

News of the fire had spread, crowds were thicker, the footmen cried out their coming in unison, voices rising higher than the noise of the crowds, cleared a path for the bearers — who, saving their breath, spoke not a word, but loped along.

The Street of the Horse-Jewelers was a contrast between plan and panic. Some there were whose houses lay at the extremities, safe of fire for hours, probably — who had procured carts and wagons and were carrying their movable property to places of safety. There were others, such as Appolonio the lorimer, and the tavernkeeper of the Sun and Wagon, a notorious old rogue named Prosenna — whose places lay adjacent to Vergil’s house, and these had formed a bucket brigade from the Fountain of Cleo. The leathern vessels, brimming, splashing, passed rapidly along the line of men, which vanished from sight through the open door of the House of the Brazen Head.

Shouts and cries, not all of alarm and fear, filled the smoky air.

From her roof, old Dame Allegra caught sight of Vergil, coming up from below as fast as the Nubians could part the crowd ( “Abrech!” the fore footmen shouted, a cry as ancient as the Crown of Egypt; “Abrech! Abrech! ”) .

“My lord!” she screamed. “My lord! Greek fire! A charm! A spell! A tetragrammaton! Greek fire! My lord! Greek fire!”

The bearers forged steadily through the swarm till they reached the foot of the steps. A word — they brought down the poles from shoulder-height to the length of their lowered arms; before he could get out, at another word, they knelt. Vergil raced up the steps. They placed the litter down against the wall, stood in front of it with folded arms. Their dedication was perfect, but it did not include fighting fires.

The men at the door of the balcony of the great hall, from which smoke came billowing, saw Vergil appear in the midst. Before they could say a word to him or to each other, he had vanished into the obscurity where blackness was from time to time shot through with a red and orange tongue of flame. Sweaty, sooty, coughing, they continued to receive the leather buckets of water, to dash them forward over the balcony, to return them down the line.

At length he reappeared. “Enough,” he said. “Stop!” They had fallen into a rhythm from which his words could not remove them. He seized the wrists of the man in front. “The fire is out!” he cried. “It’s out!”

They gaped at him. Then the man whose wrists he held said, “Sir… the smoke…”

“The smoke will be a long time in going away. But the fire is out.” He raised his voice. “The fire is out! Men — friends, neighbors, strangers — I thank you for your work of saving my house. Let Prosenna bring out his best wine and I will pay for it, and for an ox — ”

“There are embers enough to roast him, for sure,” someone said. A burst of laughter followed; died away, uncertainly, as they gazed at the buckets in their hands, suddenly become an encumbrance. After a moment the brigade took up its work again, now returning them as full as they got them.

From out in the haze, in rustic accents, perhaps those of a wagoner, a comment — “You may thank us, sir, it be your courtesy to do so… but we all knows it weren’t our work as put the fire out. You’d only to return and douse it with a spell. All’s we did was keep it in check till then.” A murmur of agreement followed. A familiar figure approached through the murk — Iohan.

“Master, it was Greek fire,” he said. “A projectile — ”

“Ah,” the countryman agreed. “A sallymandros, it were. Bain’t that a Greek word? I see un and I heard un, a-flyin’ and a-flamin’ through the air. I tell ‘ee — ”

“I haven’t time, I must get back at once — the Admiral — ” Even as he spoke, Vergil was moving. He glanced at an horlogue. It showed close to noon. He broke into a run. The floor was slippery with water, but he held his footing until he reached the stairs. And there he lost it…

Sergius Amadeus, Lord-of-the-Sea, commanding the Fleet of the South, stood on the quarter-deck of his flagship and squinted shoreward suspiciously. Everything he wore was white and freshly starched. At length he pointed a hairy, freckled hand.

“What’s that cockleshell craft approaching us so fast from astern?” he demanded.

Bonifavio, the ship’s navigator, followed the gesture. “An it please Your Lordship, looks to me like a Punic ship’s boat,” he said.

The Admiral continued to look suspicious. He never fully trusted anything on shore, near shore, or coming from shore. “She wouldn’t be overhauling us if this damned wind hadn’t dropped so damned low,” he said. “Who’s that aboard of her, clutching that gear in his hand and dressed in all that flummery?”

“An it please Your Lordship,” Bonifavio said, “I do b’lieve it’s that famous mage, as they call him. Vergil, he is by name. Them would be his doctor’s uniform, what he’s got on, me lord.”

“Damned chap broke an appointment with me this morning,” growled the Admiral. “Don’t like that. Shan’t let him aboard. A woman, a white horse, and a witch doctor — bad luck, all three, on shipboard.… Damn that wind! Where’s it gone to?”

Bonifavio looked up at the drooping sails, looked aft to where the craft steadily gained on them, its four oars flashing in the sun. “And it please your Lordship,” he said, “the thought what’s occuring to me is, maybe the mage has taken the winds outen our sails so’s he could ketch up to us, in a manner of speaking, me lord.”

Sergius Amadeus swore, stamped his foot, but made no objection to a line being thrown to the swift, slender little shell when she overhauled his flagship. Then, suddenly deciding to make the most of a bad matter, he invoked protocol. Two trumpeters wound their horns and a company of spearmen presented arms as Vergil, not indicating by anything in his manner that his doctoral robes were filthy with soot and water or that the blood on his bruised forehead was scarcely dry, came aboard.

Vergil saluted the quarter-deck with his wand, extended the pouch of purple silk to the Admiral, who touched it, did not take it. “Neptune’s navel!” he exclaimed, throwing protocol to the winds. “What in Hades has happened to Your Sapience? Flood, fire, and civil commotion, it looks like.… I trust the Emperor’s enemies were not involved?” he added, suddenly grim, seemingly prepared to put his ship about to grapple and board anything reachable on a heavy dew.

“You’d better come below, sir,” he said, pretending not to notice that Bonifavio had surreptitiously spat three times to ward off the malign influences, then dipped his right great toe in the water still dripping from Vergil’s robes to attract the benign ones.

Briefly, in the Admiral’s cabin, the Magus explained his errand.

The Lord-of-the-Sea was interested. “Speculum majorum, heard something about ‘em here and there,” he said. “Be useful to have one on board to see where enemy forces are located. Sea-Huns, filthy swine. They stay out of my sea, I can tell you, else I’d hang ‘em up on high, directly I catch them — only, of course, sometimes one can’t catch them, skittering away like water bugs. Cyprus… Paphos port… Temple of Aphrodite… ah-ah, Doctor!” — here he dug Vergil in the ribs, guffawed — ” there’s the kernel in the nut, eh? No? Hmm, well, I’m sure Your Sapience won’t take an old sea dog’s little joke amiss. Surely you’ll at least see the Temple? Respect all religions, is my motto, believe in none. Sensible principle. Still, you know, must say, after all, two thousand beautiful priestesses! All ready, willing, able — and I must say — dextrous! — to do their best to inspire male worshipers with love for their goddess, hah-hah!”